VOTE KERRY: It's what Osama bin Laden doesn't want you to do. That's my slightly partisan take on the cave-dweller sticking his head into our election. Just because of the My Pet Goat mention and assuming that he's smart enough to know that's going to tie him with our American left and end up being a net for Bush. Why assume he's smart? Well, we haven't caught him yet. Well, maybe we're dumb. I hope not.

I actually hope this has no effect whatsoever, but there's no way to be sure about that anymore. In a rational way I hope it would be a net gain for Kerry, because people would think to themselves, "Say--why isn't that bin Laden fella dead yet?" and then vote for a guy who hasn't failed at that little endeavor, or much else yet. But I'm thinking any undecided (however many are left) who's voting in a terror-first way is going to swing toward Bush on Tuesday, and that me no like.

One good thing for Kerry: He played this as well as he could, issuing a strong statement right afterwards that mentioned Bush not at all and was just a general neutral term of our national policy to capture and kill terrorists. (Bush wouldn't have used the word "capture", though.) I guess Bush played it the right way too, actually, doing the same thing. So maybe this halfassed attempt to influence our election won't be worth shit. Which is--again--my preferred outcome. And lightyears better than any other Madrid-like attempt to influence our election.

So--yeah. Inititally I agreed with Yglesias that bin Laden prefers Bush because he's a good foil for him in his (Bush's) blundering and his use of religious rhetoric, which plays into bin Laden's propaganda efforts but maybe that's giving him too much credit. Look--let's just pretend we never saw that crappy tape tonight, all right, America?